Monday, April 11, 2016

Hiddensee is a very lovely island on the westside of the German island Rügen.The island is geologically young since it was built during the last ice age. It was first mentioned in Snorri-Edda, a medieval textbook about nordic mythology from the 13. century. There it is told, that the legendary Norwegian king Hedin fought here to win a woman and/or a huge amount of gold. Therefore the island was first called Hedins-Oe, which transformed over the time to Hiddensee.During the Thirty Years' War Wallenstein ordered to burn down the woods on the North part of Hiddensee, Dornbusch, to prevent the Danish using the wood for their own good.No private car driving is allowed on the island which make it absolutely peaceful and a great pleasure to explore (with the dog running without leash all the time ;-)) The island is visited by huge flocks of migratory birds. Especially cranes can be observed here (actually we saw many of them pairwise on Rügen on our way back to Hamburg with no option to take a picture....). We saw some birds of prey as well.Later in the afternoon, we took a long walk from Vitte to the village Kloster (where a cloister was located until the reformation) and to the beach on the Westside. The Baltic Sea spread calmly in the evening sun.